“We will definitely not shut up and dribble,” James told the assembled media Saturday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. “I will definitely not do that. I mean too much to society, I mean too much to the youth, I mean too much to so many kids that feel like they don’t have a way out, and they need someone to help lead them out of the situation they’re in.”

This week the world has been honouring the memory of Martin Luther King Junior. King had a dream. It was to live in a society where people were judged by their character rather than the color of their skin. But that dream was shattered by an assassin’s bullet on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. The Civil Rights champion was just 39 years old. Five decades later, on the anniversary of his death, people across the US, and the world, paused, to remember what happened and what King stood for. How much progress have Black Americans made in the struggle to achieve racial and economic equality? Presenter: Dareen AbuGhaida Guests: Reverend Bernard Lafayette, a lifelong civil rights activist who was appointed by Martin Luther King to direct the Alabama voter registration project in 1962. Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights. Tami Sawyer, a social justice activist and director of diversity and cultural competence at Teach For America.